I was asked the other day by colleagues in Sydney if Australia’s signing of Kyoto would be an election issue in the US. Specifically would US voters not want to see the US isolated and looking like a pariah for not ratifying.

My answer was that historically how the US is perceived in Australia or Europe or anywhere else has not figured as a big election issue, and that Australia signing on would not (IMHO) change any votes in the US.

That is to say there are people who think it’s a waste of time to ratify Kyoto, either because they think anthropogenic global warming is bullshit, or they think it won’t be a bad thing (for some people it probably won’t be bad at all and might even be good), or they they think the Kyoto Protocol will do nothing to actually address AGW.

Others, like myself, think AGW does pose significant risks, that it’s worth taking steps to reduce the risks by reducing the rate of emissions (or at least reducing the rate of increase of emissions), and that Kyoto is a worthwhile, if mainly symbolic, first step.

But as an American, I don’t think the US should ratify because it will make Aussies or Kiwis or Europeans like us. I think so because I think the policy is a good one on its own merits.

I don’t think US voters who oppose Kyoto give a damn what anyone overseas thinks of the US. Indeed, IMO it would work against any candidate to try to play the “they’ll like us better overseas if we ratify Kyoto” card in the campaign.

First, I think the Green movements have blundered in focussing the discussion around energy policy almost solely on the the risks posed by global warming. They seem to have forgotten many more immediate and in my view more compelling rationales for reducing our dependence on carbon-based energy sources. For example there’s little or nor discussion of the immediate and very local benefits to be gained by reducing urban pollution from tailpipe and smokestack emissions. This is just a public health issue. There are a number of such “no-regrets” steps available now in the energy sector which make both economic and environmental sense regardless of how serious the climate change risk really is.

Second the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) issue differs from other “pollution” issues in the long “tail” of its effects. The long lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere and the long time-constants of many other components of the climate system make this a hard impact to reverse later should we decide to do so. We are used to devising policy responses to “point-source” problems such as factory effluents into rivers.

Finally the author of this op-ed piece touches on an important point: that the AGW issue seems (to me) to act as a proxy for other ideological concerns. For many, I sense it serves as a proxy for their opposition to what they perceive as the greed, consumerism, and waste inherent (again, in their ideology) in capitalism.